Comparing the scale of modelled and recorded current flood risk: results from England

Article


Penning-Rowsell, E. 2021. Comparing the scale of modelled and recorded current flood risk: results from England. Journal of Flood Risk Management. 14 (1), pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12685
TypeArticle
TitleComparing the scale of modelled and recorded current flood risk: results from England
AuthorsPenning-Rowsell, E.
Abstract

As the Sendai framework recognises, understanding the nature and severity of risk is an important prerequisite to sensible risk reducing measures. The UK has been in the forefront of assessing the scale of flood risk at a national level to inform investment and policy directions but the scale of this risk, as modelled, has reduced since 2014. This paper compares the most recent modelled version of national flood risk, in the form of the Environment Agency’s State of the Nation report, with loss figures quantified in terms of insurance claims data for the period 1998 to 2018. Depending on assumptions, the results show that the modelled results are between 2.06 and over 9.0 times the comparable flood losses measured in terms of the compensation paid to flood victims by insurance companies. The reasons for these differences remain unclear but several possibilities are reviewed. Many of these reasons appear implausible, but the divergence between the two sets of results should encourage the users of this data to consider carefully their assessments of the true scale of flood risk that the country faces, and perhaps promote similar comparisons in other countries.

KeywordsGeography, Planning and Development, Environmental Engineering, Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality, Water Science and Technology
Research GroupFlood Hazard Research Centre
PublisherWiley
JournalJournal of Flood Risk Management
ISSN1753-318X
Electronic1753-318X
Publication dates
Online10 Dec 2020
Print15 Feb 2021
Publication process dates
Deposited16 Dec 2020
Accepted24 Nov 2020
Submitted27 Jan 2020
Output statusPublished
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Accepted author manuscript
File Access Level
Restricted
Copyright Statement

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Flood Risk Management published by Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12685
LanguageEnglish
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